Amanda Ronanis an Austin-based writer. After many years as a teacher, Amanda transitioned out of the classroom and into educational publishing. She wrote and edited English, language arts, reading, and social studies content for grades K-12. Since becoming a full-time writer, Amanda has worked with a diverse set of clients, ranging from functional medicine doctors to design schools to moving companies. She blogs, writes long-form articles, and pens YA and children's fiction. Her first YA series, My Brother is a Robot, is slated for release by Scobre Educational Press in September 2015.

The conference tends to attract a crowd that’s different from your typical teacher conference. About half the attendees are educators and administrators from both K-12 and higher ed institutes and the other half are edtech businesses and government/non-profit representatives.

For the last seven years, theSXSW EDU conferencehas brought together teachers, students, administrators, ed tech companies, policy-makers, and entrepreneurs. The purpose of the conference is, according to the website, to “foster innovation in learning by hosting a community of optimistic, forward-thinking, purpose-driven stakeholders with a shared goal of impacting the future of teaching and learning.”

Over the course of ten years of classroom teaching, I took off only one summer. And by “took off,” I mean no attending conferences, no teaching summer school, and no working other jobs. I used those four weeks for reading, writing, watching all the movies and TV I’d missed during the school year, working on my house, and spending time with my family. The two final weeks of my summer break were spent mostly lesson planning and prepping for the year to come.

On October 20, 2017 the Education Department, led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, released a listed of 72 documents related to special education that were to be rescinded. The initial announcement framed the move as one that should relieve “unnecessary regulatory burdens.” Upon further inspection, though, most of those documents had expired, been replaced recently, or been overturned by new laws and policies. Unfortunately, that truth didn’t mend the growing rift between special education and disability advocates and the Education Department.

Think back to the useful skills that you learned as a child. Was managing your finances one of them? If you're like most Americans, the answer is probably no. Instead of growing up and learning how to manage money, avoid debt, and live free of financial worry, Americans have a fairly dismal financial outlook.